There's no denying that comedian Adam Sandler has a knack for putting
together gross-out comedy and soft soap in proportions that make for
box office success, always taking care to set the laddish piss and puke
gags next to more chick-friendly romantic business. Here, he's a thirty-year-old
slacker, content to mooch around rather than practice law, who has just
been dumped for a much older man by a girlfriend (Kelly Lynch) who wants
him to show some maturity. When the lost son of a just-left-for-China
roommate shows up on the doorstep, Sandler takes in the kid (twins Cole
and Dylan Sprouse) and tries to show he can be a decent father, even
though he is inclined to be as irresponsible as the brat, which not
only makes for the usual cute or gruesome kiddie body function and heartwarming
bonding bits but impresses Joey Lauren Adams enough to rope her in as
leading lady. It ends up in court for some crowd-pleasing but astonishingly
unlikely plot-twists.

It wants to be liked just a bit too much, but as undemanding fluff
goes it has some laughs and not too many tears. Sandler shows an admirable
loyalty to his buddies/entourage, finding roles for good bit-players
like Buscemi (as a homeless man who remembers 'the so-called disco era'
as 'the mushroom era') and Josh Mostel as a rare social services guy
in the movies to be a sympathetic, serious but not solemn do-gooder
rather than a cruel bureaucrat, not to mention stooge Rob Schneider
as a comedy foreign delivery man (not a great joke) and the amusing
college buddies who have gone gay ('they watch a different kind of porn
now') but are otherwise just the same likable wasters they always were.
It caps a potentially horrid courtroom homily on fatherhood, that brings
round Sandler's own stuffy Dad (Joe Bologna), with a neat joke about
a court full of crying men phoning their own fathers.

The women (down to Leslie Mann) have to put up with a lot of jokes
about Hooters and stand for a certain kind of stability that seems as
maternal as it is romantic partner, but Adams is given some sort of
time to make her case. Steve Buscemi's courtroom statement: 'If OJ can
get away with murder, then why can't Sonny have this kid?'
KIM NEWMAN